A few days before Mark left we went right. You could hike left or right. The left led to the big park, to polo players and picnic tables and other people. To the right was a shady creek choked with poison oak, lonely and Edenic and alive. We stopped and sat, our path obstructed by an angry drone, the dangerous hum of hundreds of displaced bees. We raced, egged on leaves spiraling lazily down a stretch of creek. I caught a frog and laid down on a rock and remembered out loud a poem about plums I’d read earlier that day. Mark looked up, surprised.
“What is that?”
“A poem.”
